Now. This is first and foremost going to be a PvE guide. As most of our regulars on these boards know, Pigtails sucks at PvP. So don't ask me PvP questions, because I don't know the answer. With that, why would someone want to roll a shadow priest? Simple answer: Because melting faces is awesome. Complicated answer is complicated. Shadow is a lot of fun though. We're in a very good place right now as far as DPS goes, regularly in the top five on most fights in Firelands, and number two overall in regular 10's. I say number two, because fire mages don't count since they're so OP for Alys.

So, when someone is first starting out a new character, the first question they usually ask is "What race should I be?" Well, that depends. Normally I would suggest that you roll whatever race you like to look at best. However, if you're a min/maxer this is what I would suggest:

Horde: Either Goblin or Troll. Goblins have a passive 1% haste bonus, which is really yummy for shadow. It makes our haste breakpoints easier to obtain. Trolls are good too, as they have Berserking, which gives a boost to haste every 3 minutes. Personally, I prefer the constant 1% haste, but some people might prefer the haste CD.

Undead, Tauren and Blood Elves really don't have much to offer in comparison. Undead have a pvp trinket racial which is nice, Blood Elves have Arcane Torrent which is a melee range silence and gives 6% mana, and Tauren have War Stomp and faster herb picking.

Alliance: This is a bit trickier. I think Worgen would probably be the best option due to the 1% crit, but crit is also our worst secondary stat. Now that doesn't mean it's bad, it's just the worst one. I'll get into that later.

Humans and Draenei would be good options too though. Humans because of their spirit bonus, which will help you get closer to hit capped. And Draenei, because their hit racial gets you closer to hit capped. Plus they're a lot of fun to look at. =x Seriously, playing a female Draenei makes my brain start thinking like a frat boy.

Gnomes get a 5% bonus to mana, which can be useful but really only marginally so.

Night Elves and Dwarves unfortunately get no love. Their racials are useful in a defensive manner, but they don't really offer any particular combat bonuses aside from that.

One last thing for this section. This is going to sound strange, but for leveling I really don't recommend actually going shadow until you hit about 55 or so. Before that, shadow just sucks to level as. We're a DoT class, and unlike Moonkins, we don't have a reliable nuke to help down mobs quickly. At least not at low levels. Mind Flay is pretty poor damage, and Mind Blast has an 8 second CD. So you might get to use it once per mob, but that's about it. When you hit 81 you finally get Mind Spike, which makes leveling a lot easier.

You might be wondering what you should level as if not shadow. Discipline. Discipline is really nice actually. You can kill sh*t easily, you never run low on health or mana, and you have shields to protect yourself. Plus you have the added bonus of being able to run dungeons as a healer without having to respec. It's pretty simple really, just make sure you have the major glyph for Smite, and take talents that increase your damage or self-healing. In particular, do not miss out on Evangelism and Archangel.

Talents are given a rating in three categories. "R" for Raiding Usefulness, "S" for Solo Effectiveness, "P" for PvP Power. They are rated A,B,C,D and F. Not sure why there's no E. There never was one in the grading when I was in school, so I'm not sure why the E was left out. Poor guy.

A = Very Effective for this role. Would likely be unwise to miss this talent if you can get it. B = Solid talent for this role. Should not be skipped if you can help it. C = Average in effectiveness or not effective at all times in this role. Might be worth getting if you can see yourself using it. D = Situational talent or too expensive in talent points for the effect. Unless you have a plan for it, no sense in getting these. F = Highly situational talent at best for this role. May only be useful in a couple fights ever. Or may just suck altogether. A skippable talent.

And I'm going to use Purple here, because shadow priests love purple. If you don't love purple, you can GTFO.

Shadow Talents

Tier 1

Darkness (3) ~This is a no brainer. Haste is yummy for Shadow priests. We eat it for breakfast, or something. R: A P: A S: A

Veiled Shadows (2) ~This is definitely a good talent, but it's not really useful until you actually GET your Shadowfiend at 66. There's no point in picking this up until 55. The reason for this is, it's either Veiled Shadows, or take a PvP talent that you don't need. Unless you're leveling with PvP of course. The decrease to Fade is just a perk for PvE, but for PvP it can be quite useful if paired with PhantasmR: A P: A S: B

Improved Mind Blast (3) ~This is a good talent for both PvE and PvP. The reduced CD obviously helps you to use Mind Blast more often, and the reduced healing can be useful in PvP. R: A P: A S: A

Improved Devouring Plague (2) ~Another great all around talent for shadow. DP is an instant cast, so giving it some initial damage upon cast is pretty handy, no matter what you're doing. However, given the large amount of mana it takes to cast DP, it's not quite as useful for soloing, especially at lower levels. I'd avoid using DP aside from bosses or trash with high HP in dungeons and raids. For PvP, use as much as you want, just be mindful of the mana cost. R: A P: A S: D

Twisted Faith (2) ~Oh the joys of being a hybrid. Spirit = hit? Yes please! This is a good talent overall, but might be marginally less useful for PvP due to the lower hit requirements. Also less useful for leveling since hit isn't really needed. Still, I'd pick it up at some point anyways. R: A P: B S: B

Tier 3

Shadowform (1) ~What makes a shadow priest a shadow priest. If you don't pick up this talent as soon as its available, you are a bad shadow priest, period. R: A P: A S: A

Phantasm (2) ~This is mostly a PvP talent. It can be useful in PvE, but very rarely. I'd avoid picking this up for PvE unless there is a specific fight you plan on using it for. R: F P: A S: F

Harnessed Shadows (2) ~Another bread and butter shadow talent. If you don't pick this up, you'll make me cry. R: A P: A S: A

Tier 4

Silence (1) ~Great talent for PvP, aside from the long CD. Rarely useful in PvE. You may be asked occasionally to grab this talent for a specific fight if your raid group is short on melee folks for interrupts. Otherwise, skip this. If your raid leader does ask you to take this, gently remind them that Silence has a 45 seconds CD and you have to give up 3 points in DPS talents to take it. If they still want you take it, do so but grumble about it to your other shadow priest friends. Trade Imp. MB for Silence. R: F P: B S: F

Mind Melt (2) ~Great talent. Makes SWD a lot more powerful. The Mind Spike effects are useful too, but not until you actually get Mind Spike of course. R: A P: A S: A

Tier 5

Pain and Suffering (2) ~Another mandatory talent. Having MF refresh SWP is just awesome. Reduced damage from SWD is great too. R: A P: A S: A

Vampiric Touch (1) ~Pick this up or else. This has the added bonus of being another DoT, and giving us Replenishment. Also required for Sin and Punishment. R: A P: A S: A

Paralysis (2) ~This is a PvP talent. There's really no point in taking it for PvE. R: F P: A S: F

Tier 6

Psychic Horror (1) ~Another PvP talent mostly. A lot of people pick this up for PvE, but I really don't see the use for it. I'd rather take an extra point in the Disc tree. R: F P: A S: F

Sin and Punishment (2) ~This is a dual PvP and PvE talent. The VT part is great for PvP, and the Shadowfiend part is great for PvE. But again, you don't get Shadowfiend until 66, so don't start picking up this talent until you're 65. Get Apparitions first. R: A P: A S: A

Shadowy Apparitions (3) ~This is an odd talent. Currently, because of the way WoW's combat logs function, we do not get credit for Shadowy Apparition DPS. Plus they make up a very small portion of our damage. However, there's nothing else to take, so take it. R: C P: C S: C

Tier 7

Dispersion (1) ~Our final tier talent. Dispersion is awesome for many reasons. It gives us a large amount of mana back, and it's also great for defense as it reduces all damage you take by 90%. The only downside, is that we can't cast while Dispersed. Unless of course, you are awesome and a goblin. Goblins can use their Rocket Barrage racial while Dispersed. But, I'd just like to say before the other races freak out, it's only about 5k damage, so don't get your undies in a bunch, k? R: A P: A S: A

Discipline Talents

Tier 1

Improved Power Word: Shield (2) ~As a shadow priest, this is mostly a PvP talent. It can be useful in a raid setting if you don't have a priest healer, but otherwise their shields are going to be far better. R: C P: A S: A

Twin Disciplines (3) ~No brainer here. More damage is a good thing. R: A P: A S: A

Mental Agility (3) ~You can take either 2 or 3 points of this talent. At first, just take two. If you want to stick another point in here, wait until your point at 84. It's really not necessary unless you're having mana problems though. R: A P: A S: A

Tier 2

Evangelism (2) ~Mandatory. If you don't take this, I will slap you. Required for Archangel. R: A P: A S: A

Archangel (1) ~Mandatory. Archangel gives you WIIIIIIINGS! R: A P: A S: A

Inner Sanctum (3) ~This is pretty useful for both PvP and Raiding. I like to put my last 2 points in here to help out my healers. R: B P: A S: C

That's it for the talents. This is the base talent tree at 85. The last two points are up to you, but most people usually pick between Psychic Scream, the third point in Mental Agility, and Inner Sanctum.

Now, it might seem odd that Haste is valued higher than hit and spirit. That's because haste is so ridiculously awesome for us. We get more ticks on our DoTs because of haste, and Mind Flay/Mind Sear are considered DoTs for all intents and purposes. And of course, Mind Blast and Mind Spike are cast faster. So many of our spells are instant casts, it's not a significant dps loss if we miss. Also, keep in mind that subsequent ticks of your DoTs do not miss. Only the initial cast will miss.

There is also a very large debate on whether or not shadow priests need to be hit capped. This is really up to the individual. If you track your DoTs and know that you will be able to notice if one of your DoTs miss, I think it's fine to not be hit capped. Just make sure you recast your DoTs if you miss. I think that 15.3% is a good place to be with hit. The vast majority of the time, I will only miss once or twice over the course of a boss fight at that level. If you want to be hit capped, go ahead.

Quote:

Some Important Numbers - For reference, here is the amount of each stat we need for our next rating or cap.

Haste plateaus are important, because they give you extra ticks to your DoTs, specifically Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague. Certain haste points will also increase the damage done by Improved Devouring Plague. Figuring out the haste plateaus can be tricky, because they depend on different things, namely whether or not you get Dark Intent from a lock in your group, and whether or not you are a goblin.

Now, in general, Improved Devouring Plague will get increased damage at 1601 and 3202. I would assume that Dark Intent and Goblin haste would have some impact on this, but I'm not positive on this and I suck at math so if it does, I'm not sure how to go about figuring the numbers on that.

The first extra tick of VT is so easy to get, that it's not even generally worried about. To get your second tick of VT, you need to reach the following levels of haste:

So there's two problems here that I see. Without DI and under 2589, you can get more dps by reforging into mastery. But with DI, there's no point to doing this. Secondly, 2589 is very hard to reach, and most of the time you will be under that level. You also have to concider that things like trinkets, proc enchants, and set bonuses can change the value of stat weights slightly (up or down).

The question is this: Do you get DI in raids? If the answer is yes, then just stack haste and forget about all of this, as it probably will never affect you. If however the answer is no, then you have a decision to make, whether to reforge some of the haste away in favor of mastery. And if so, by how much? In theory you could go all the way down to 1602, however I know from experience there's some kind of internal break-down somewhere between 1700-2000 haste where the synergy between your spells starts to go bad.

I would say that if you rarely get DI, then you would be safe to reforge haste away until you reach about 2284 (2134 for goblins). My reasoning being this is just above the point where you get a 2nd extra tick of DP with DI active, and so if you ever do get DI, you will be ready for it. At the same time you will be doing pretty close to your maximum without DI (ie most of the time). I think this is a happy medium (ie. sweet spot) between the two, and a good goal for people who don't often get DI.

Reforging

1. Crit - Reforge to Haste first, then Spirit until 17% hit, then Mastery. 2. Spirit, Hit, and Mastery - Reforge to Haste first, then Spirit until 17%, then Mastery. 3. Haste - Do not reforge this stat.

So basically, if you have a piece of gear with crit on it, you are going to reforge it to haste. If the item already has haste, reforge to spirit/hit until hit cap, and then mastery.

For gear with spirit, hit or mastery, again reforge to haste if the item does not already have it. If it does, reforge until hit capped, and then mastery.

For gear with haste, 9/10 you are going to leave it alone. There are exceptions to this though, depending on whether or not you get DI in your raid as described above.

Also keep in mind when you are reforging mastery, you want to round up to the nearest point. So say you currently have 12.5 mastery. Unless you can safely reforge your gear to get that extra half a point in mastery, you're better off reforging the excess mastery to something else while keeping your mastery at just above 12 points. Mastery does not scale like haste and crit do.

Gemming

Gemming is an area where I see a lot of people mess up. First and foremost, you do not need to match sockets. Sometimes it is beneficial due to the socket bonus, but you aren't required to do so in general. You should only gem for a socket bonus if it is +20 Intellect or +30 of a secondary stat. This is provided only one socket is blue or yellow. If there are two or more, just gem both sockets red.

For an opener, this is what I do for bosses. SWP goes up first, followed by SF. MF for 5 ticks to get your 5 stacks of Evangelism, then pop MB. Finally, put up VT and DP. Save AA for before you cast the second MB. Most people will recommend that you put up VT first, and then SWP and DP. The reason for waiting, is because most of the time, after you have your 5 ticks of MF with SWP up, you will have at least one orb. Once you pop AA and MB, you will then have your ES buff, and most likely your trinket buffs and power torrent will have activated, giving your first DoTs a big punch to start out with. Now granted, this only makes a huge difference at the start of a boss encounter. This opener I learned about from Kilee's guide, and he has stated that he has extensively tested both openers, and found that delaying your DoTs in favor of ES and other buffs, only pulls out ahead by a handful of dps. So unless you're in a progression raid, where every single point of dps counts, it's not a huge deal. Do whichever method feels most comfortable.

Under no circumstances should you ever cast your DoTs immediately after you use AA. This wipes your 5 stacks of Evangelism, which buffs your DoTs. If you need to recast DoTs after you use AA, get 5 ticks of Mind Flay first.

On to the priority system!

All 3 DoTs > SF & AA > SWD under 25% health > MB > MF

Keeping up your DoTs is your #1 priority. While MF usually ends up being a good chunk of our dps, it does relatively wimpy damage. It is our filler spell. SF & AA are our CD abilities and should be used as damage buffs. They have the extra perk of being mana CD's as well, but this is not their primary function. SF should be lined up with BL/Heroism and your Volcanic Potion, as much as possible. This becomes infinitely easier once you get 2 pieces of T12 and have the CD reduction. AA should as well, but with only a minute and a half CD, it's not as big of a worry. This is something that will take practice to get the hang of, and communication with your raid as to when BL will be used. Unless you are low on mana or are moving, SWD should not be used unless your target is under 25% health. MB should mostly be used on CD, but I will go over this later.

AoE: Shadow Priests have it very easy for AoE for the most part. If you have low health mobs, and there's more than three or so, you want to use Mind Sear. Now, to get the full damage potential, you need to have ES up. If you are just flying through trash in a heroic, don't worry about it. However, if you're doing an add phase in a raid encounter, say spiderlings on Beth for example, you want your ES buff.

Another method of AoE is to multi-dot. This is more of an advanced trick, but it will be great for boosting your damage. On regular Shannox for example, you have the boss, and then his two puppies. Most groups are going to want to get Rageface down first, so you perform your opener on him, and then once DoTs are up, you get SWP and VT up on Shannox and Riplimb. Your main target is always your priority as far as keeping DoTs up, but try to keep track of your DoTs on secondary targets as well, and it will significantly boost your DPS. On heroic Shannox, you don't want to do this because the dogs aren't supposed to die. Some T11 bosses that are great for multi-dotting are every boss in BoT, Nef, and possibly Omnitron in BWD. Omnitron is a bit trickier due to their shield mechanic. If you are the only person DoTing up the bot under 50 energy, you're probably fine. If there's someone else doing it too, there's a good chance you're going to break the shield, and depending on which bot it is, you could potentially wipe the raid, even with the nerfs.

Movement: Shadow priests are lucky in that we have a pretty good amount of mobility. If you have a movement heavy fight, like Atramedes from BWD or Rag in Firelands, the best thing to do is to spam DP, make sure you keep SWP up, and if you like you can cast SWD on CD, although if the target is at 25% health or above, it's not going to do a whole lot of damage. Just make sure you keep an eye on your mana. DP costs a lot, it can be pretty easy to get low on mana without realizing it if you spam it. Also, depending on the situation, you can do a move, stop and cast, move type of thing, while doing a normal rotation. If you have to book it though, I wouldn't recommend doing that.

Managing your ES buff: This, in my opinion, is what makes the Shadow priest rotation fun and challenging. Orbs are a bit RNG, but it's not usually a problem. Basically, to get the ES buff, you must cast either Mind Blast or Mind Spike while you have at least one orb up. 95% of the time, you're going to want to use MB because MS damage is kinda wimpy and it wipes your DoTs off the target. The only time you want to use MS in a raid environment is for that purpose, to hold off on pushing a boss into the next phase.

Now, it's important to keep track of your timers on both MB and ES. The reason for this is you want to make sure you always have ES up when you refresh your DoTs, as ES gives them a nice damage boost. MB has an 8 second CD on it, and ES buff lasts for 15 seconds. So, if you have no orbs when MB is off CD, but you have more than 8 seconds left to your ES and/or your DoTs, go ahead and use MB. If you have no orbs, and your DoTs and ES are about to come off, you want to refresh those DoTs before ES comes off, and then go ahead and use MB. There are times where you are going to want to hold off on using MB though. This is a learning process, and you'll get better at timing things with more practice.

Managing your DoTs: One of the great changes that Cata brought us is that you no longer can clip your DoTs. This makes managing DoTs much easier, because you don't have to worry about losing ticks. The best time to refresh VT is about 1 to 2 seconds before it falls off. SWP you shouldn't have to worry about due to MF refreshing it, and DP does enough initial damage via the Improved DP talent, that you can refresh it early without it being a dps loss. In fact, I use a cast sequence macro so that I can spam a button and cast VT and DP, and I refresh DP with VT, unless I had a nice buff with my previous cast of DP, in which case I'll hold off until the next round since the timer on DP is nearly twice of VT.

As I said earlier, keeping up your DoTs is your number one priority. You want your DoT uptime as close to 100% as you can get. Refreshing DP and VT at the same time, makes it so that my uptime on SWP and VT are normally at 100%, or close to it. 80 to 85% uptime on VT is a good target, but until you hit 100% there's always room for improvement. For an example, you can look at a log from last week for me for Baleroc. If you click on the Damage by Spell tab, you can see my uptime on my DoTs. SWP is at 99%, DP is at 92% and VT is at 90%.

Clipping MF: This is another advanced technique. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it, other than copying a post of Kilee's word for word, so I will just leave a link to the thread here and if you have any questions you can ask. He explains it in the second post.

For Add-ons, you need three types to be a good shadow priest: cast bar add on, DoT tracker, and buff tracker. My preference for these are Gnosis, Tidy Plates: Threat Plates, and Power Auras. I seriously cannot recommend Power Auras enough. This add on is amazing with its versatility.

Gnosis is, IMHO, the best cast bar add on for any class with a channeled spell. It is particularly great for shadow priests because of the MF clipping trick. Gnosis just does a better job of showing where ticks are with channeled spells than Quartz does. Plus with Gnosis you can create as many cast bars as you want, for anything, and can customize them anyway you want.

Threat Plates is awesome because it gives you a more visual and obvious representation of when you are close to stealing threat, but I mostly use it for the DoT tracking. You can set it up to track any type of debuff or buff you like. For simplicity's sake, I just use it to track my own spells. If you are unfamiliar with what Tidy Plates does, it is a nameplate add on. It creates neat, solid bars just below the name of mobs you are in range of. It makes it easier to see the health of targets, when they are going to cast a spell, and the timers of your DoTs.

Power Auras I use for tracking buffs, tracking my DoTs on my main target, and tracking a variety of boss mechanics. I'll list an export of my power auras here, and anyone can feel free to use and/or edit them as they see fit.

Auras 1-6 are for tracking the three DoTs. Two auras each: one with a timer, and another aura that bounces when there's only 3 seconds left to the DoT. Aura 7 shows when Shadowfiend is off CD. Aura 8 is paired with aura 12, to show a flamey skull when SWD is off CD and when the target has 24% health or less. Aura 9 shows when MB is off CD. Auras 10 and 11 show when AA is off CD only when you have 5 stacks of Evangelism. Aura 13 is a low mana aura. Aura 14 shows when Dispersion is off CD but I really only use this for eating crystals on Baleroc (it's off the rest of the time). Auras 15 and 16 show shadow orb stacks, and 17 tracks the Empowered Shadow buff.

Here is a screenshot of my UI in action for reference:

Another useful add on I really like is MFClip. It is really useful in terms of keeping track of your DoT uptime after combat, as well as a guide to help you get the hang of the rotation.

Gnome racial Expansive Mind was changed to increased mana when Int was changed to increase SP. Otherwise gnomes would be OP for any caster class.

____________________________

Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:

As a forum admin, you... see things. Things that you can never unsee. Things that make you fervently wish to protect other people from ever seeing those things. This is why forum admins are sometimes cranky.

As a forum admin, you... see things. Things that you can never unsee. Things that make you fervently wish to protect other people from ever seeing those things. This is why forum admins are sometimes cranky.

Heh, so I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this, but apparently I have been gimping myself with how I use AA. Browsing the O-boards just now, I was reminded that when you cast AA, it wipes all 5 stacks of Evangelism. If you cast your DoTs immediately after using AA, without getting your Eva stacks back, you are gimping your dps on those DoTs. I've edited the rotation section to reflect this.

Also, I feel like an idiot lol. Over the course of an entire raid fight, I don't think this would have made a huge difference, but still.

I've re-read this a couple of times and I still can't figure out what use Mind Spike is? A mild nuke that wipes the dots seems like a strange idea. I must be missing something.

Also I'd add that for soloing rather than raiding the glyphed PW:S is a very handy heal without leaving shadowform.

Mind spike is crazy-good for soloing, makes me a sad panda that I had to wait 80 levels to finally get a nuke with no CD. Other than that, in the last 10-12 seconds of a mob's life, Mind Spike might work out better than recasting DoTs.

____________________________

Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:

As a forum admin, you... see things. Things that you can never unsee. Things that make you fervently wish to protect other people from ever seeing those things. This is why forum admins are sometimes cranky.

Mind Spike's use is dependent upon what you're doing. In raids and dungeons, it's use is primarily for getting down low level adds or wiping the DoTs off a boss to prevent pushing into a new phase (or in the case of Omnitron, to prevent shields from coming down and exploding the raid). If you are soloing, the fastest way to get mobs down is to do the rotation of MSx3, MB and then SWD if it still isn't dead and is less than 25% health. It might take two rotations to get the mob down low enough, and that's fine.

The general rule of thumb, is that if a mob is going to die in less than 15 seconds, it's better to use MS and MB than to put up DoTs.